Report Client

[Yasir S]

I was talking with a client maybe a month ago and later decided not to start working for him.

He took a lot of "free" work and later wanted to work outside Upwork. As far as I remember, he even told me that he came to Upwork to source people and take them outside of it. I didn't go along with him because of many other stuffs he said.

It just came to my mind that i need to report him. I presume he is doing the same with a lot of freelancers. And maybe took a few away from the platform as well. 

Is there anyone to PM?

[Petra R]

There is a perfectly good "Flag as inappropriate" button on every job post.

Use it.  It's not rocket science and you don't have to waste anyone's time to PM them, simply flag the job post as inappropriate or create a ticket to support.

It is not the moderators' job to play messenger.

[Yasir S]

I used the "flag" button to report. Then refreshed. Then the button came again. I flagged it again.

Now after a few days i went back and see the job post still there. Why hasn't it been taken down yet?

This client is a big scam!

[Kathy T]

Sometimes a job's description doesn't tell the whole story or indicate what's going on. If you have communication of what was said to you, especially the part where the client tells you he's taking freelancer's off site you can create a ticket for that and attach/include proof of that. 

FYI not only would that violate Upwork's TOS for the client, but for every freelancer that agreed to that arrangement and they can also get their account suspended.

In the future do not do free work. You are here to make money. You're not going to be making money giving away work for free. And you've done this several times. Remember, promises do not pay bills, get gas in your car or pay for food. Money does. Don't submit or do work with the intention of more work. Do the job you're hired for. IF you get more work great, if not, that's ok because you weren't expecting it in the first place. 

As for the job still being up, that's Upwork's decision. You did what you were supposed to (flag the job) now move on, It's not your job to look out for others aside from what you've done. 

[Preston H · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your efforts to report this bad client and make the Upwork platform a better place. Now that Petra has told you how to do so properly, it will hopefully be easier for you to do so if you run into something like this in the future.

re: "He took a lot of 'free' work"

And in the future, don't work for free.

A real Upwork client doesn't ask freelancers to work for free. Real Upwork clients pay freelancers for their time and their work.

[Preston H]

re: "I used the 'flag' button to report. Then refreshed. Then the button came again. I flagged it again.

Now after a few days i went back and see the job post still there. Why hasn't it been taken down yet?"

That's simply how the flag button works. Don't over-think it. Flagging the job is not necessarily going to remove the job posting immediately.

In the future, please only flag a job one time. After that, your work is done.

You do not need to check back to see if a job posting is still online. For one thing, you may not be able to tell if the job posting has been "removed" or not. Sometimes a URL link you have saved will let you see a posting, even if the posting is no longer active or now longer listed anywhere that other Upwork freelancers can see it.

[Julie W]

what if the job is already closed. there's no inappropriate flag button

[Petra R]

---

Julie W wrote:

what if the job is already closed. there's no inappropriate flag button

---

Then there is nothing to report.

You can also report individual messages in your message thread.

[Lucio Ricardo M]

Free work, it is an issue. that is the reason why I abandoned other freelancing platform. the client asked me the work in the messaging service of such platform, without signing contract, I give him advance of the work, and he never got back to me. In exchange here in Upwork when a client, of those annoying ones that remain irresponsive for days and days, didn't respond to my verbal paying request in Messages, I took the case to the Upwork suppport team, and 10 minutes later the client came in contact with me, with an excuse that his credit card got damaged (aha, and I was born yesterday). Doing free work is violating the Upwork Terms of Service, so that, when a client ask for work that goes beyond bibliographic research about the project requirements, you can discharge yourself saying that it is an Upwork rule. Because there are abusive and dishonest clients, they exists anywhere, and every freelancer task is to show them that these practices are no business.

Also when clients submit a $100 fixed price project, but the does and debugs of this project result extending for weeks, it comes out no business, but it is other issue, the how to estimate and negotiate the contract price ant whether is valid to make adjustments on the way.

[David S M]

If you want to work for free there are lots of other platforms that will let you do that. Please don't do it on Upwork.